Advice For Those Just Starting Out

Making It Big In Shorts: Ultimate Guide To Making Short Films – Kim Adelman [FULL INTERVIEW]

Filmcourage

Published

January 20, 2024

[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]

Kim Adelman, Author/Filmmaker/Instructor: Often in film festivals they’ll tell you The ticket to buy at the film festival is the short compilations because that’s where the really most exciting filmmaking is happening.

Film Courage: What is a short film?

Kim: What is a short film is a really good question because a short film can be anything but I think what defines a short film obviously is the length, it’s a short film. There’s actually a few organizations that do have a defined length of what and how long a short film should be. For example, if you want to be considered for an Academy Award, The Academy says a short film I believe is 40 minutes or less for narrative. Documentaries sometimes have different lengths for their films. Quite often for film festivals in the application they’ll say specifically how long the short film can be disqualified for short film, usually it’s 50 minutes or less. Although personally, I think if you’re making a 50 minute long short film that’s too long of a short film. Short films should be short in my opinion.

Film Courage: Do what percentage is actually way past a half hour?t Isn’t it generally 15 minutes or under?

Kim: A lot of people, because they see short films that are longer, think that’s how long a short film should be so they’ve seen student films that the university requires the film to be a certain length because it’s a learning experience. You want to do a longer film so you get the full experience of making something. You’re not making something in half a day and it’s 30 seconds long or something like that. When people are used to seeing these longer short films they think Oh, that’s what makes a good short film, a short film should be 20 minutes long or 30 minutes long or they worry people won’t take them seriously if their film…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).

BIO:

Kim Adelman is the author of Making It Big in Shorts. She produced 19 short films that won 30+ awards and played over 150 film festivals worldwide, including the Sundance Film Festival four years in a row. Ms. Adelman currently teaches Cinema Production 2 at Mount St. Mary’s University and Low Budget Filmmaking at UCLA Extension, where she was honored as Entertainment Studies Instructor of the Year in 2014 and won the Distinguished Instructor Award in 2016.